The Green Mile Review
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The Green Mile is a 1999 American drama film directed by Frank Darabont adapted from the 1996 Stephen King novel. The film is told in a flashback format of Paul Edgecomb (TomHanks), a death row corrections officer, during the Great Depression in the United States. The film tells the story of Paul’s life during this time and the supernormal events he witnessed. The story is framed by Paul as an old man in a nursing home. Paul tells his story to another elderly inmate, Elaine, as an explanation for why he was overcome when watching a Fred Astaire movie in the common room. Paul tells her that the film reminded him of when he was a prison officer in charge of death row inmates at Cold Mountain Penitentiary during the summer of 1935.
The scene shifts to 1935, where Paul works with his fellow guards on death row in the Louisiana penitentiary. The cell block is nicknamed “The Green Mile” due to its green linoleum floor-the path that an inmate must walk from his cell to the room with the electric chair. Paul, a decent, moral man, treats each prisoner with respect. His life changes, however, with the admission of John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a huge African-American man convicted of the rape and murder of two young sisters. Despite his powerful figure, Coffey is gentle and possesses a miraculous, mysterious power to heal.
Coffey heals Pauls bladder infection, resurrects a dead mouse, Mr. Jingles, that is the treasure of another inmate, Del, and cures the wardens wife of her inoperable brain cancer. Each healing requires direct contact between Coffey and the “patient” and is accompanied by mystical effects. Coffey takes the infection, brokenness, disease into his body and is able to expel it, though it exhausts him.
Coffeys powers extend to visions and he directly feels the pain of others. He transmits his visions of the death of the two girls to Paul, who realizes that Coffey is innocent (indeed he had been trying to heal the children when he was apprehended) and that another inmate on the green mile, “Wild Bill”- the true killer, is guilty of the crime. Paul, advised by his supportive wife (Bonnie Hunt), asks Coffey what to do. Coffey, exhausted from suffering the knowledge of the evil of the world and cognizant of